


The dust and dreams of Kirkwall

by Kit



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Aveline for Viscount, Dragon Age Kiss Battle, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, connections and threads and snippets of story, friendship in all forms, pirate!Anora
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 13:50:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 5,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1268725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lovers and friends and enemies, all mixed in together. A series of drabbles and other short fiction, mostly focussed on DA2, cross posted from my tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. kiss battle: give me a sign (Aveline/Donnic, act 3).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aveline and Donnic find each other through fire and fury. The screaming, and the dark.
> 
> Most of these stories are also found [ here ](http://hornkerling.tumblr.com/). Requests are generally always open on my tumblr.

They find each other through fire and fury. The screaming in the dark.   
  
Strong hands wrap around his forearms. Armored as he is, there is only a small pressure, but he watches as she runs her fingertips along splint and seam, searching more tiny flaws that might lead to blood. And Donnic can’t help his smile.   
  
“It’s three packs of trouble, Guardsman.” The words are steady. Donnic looks up from her hands, and green eyes meet his. Her face is grimed and sweat streaked. Freckles hidden in the flick and spill of shadow from a burning warehouse. Her lips twist. Half a smile. “Mages, the templars—”   
  
“—and Hawke, Captain.” His own hands shift, sliding beneath hers to grasp just above the elbow. They are braced. Aveline sighs.   
  
“And Hawke.”   
  
“The Guard’s on damage control.” Someone screams behind them. Donnic feels himself tense, watches a muscle twitch as Aveline closes her eyes. “Based in the lower city, split from there between Hightown and Darktown. We’re keeping the exits clear. I…” he swallows. “I took the liberty of anticipating your orders, Captain.”   
  
Aveline leans her forehead against his. “Nicely done. I trust no one better.”  
  
“Captain, I—”  
  
“—I mean it, Donnic.” They do not disentangle arms and hands, but she pulls back enough to look him. Square in the eye, with lifted chin. Glorious. “No one better. And I’ve done this before.” She shudders.   
  
“I won’t ask any battlefield promises of you,” she says. “They can be too hard to keep.”   
  
“Aveline.”   
  
“Yes?”   
  
He kisses her. Her mouth tastes of smoke, and and she is fierce and bright and Donnic is unsure if the tears that slip between them are hers her his. He feels that she has bitten her lip raw, and their hands break apart, hers gentle in his hair while he cups her cheek. A last minute of ease and sweetness, shared breath.   
  
“I understand,” he tells her. Because he does, and—as she steps back into the tangle and swirl that will lead her to the Gallows—he makes all those promises, just the same.


	2. kiss battle: Tell me a story (Merrill/Varric)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merrill finds her way, and thinks of old friends. Set post-game, with some small Inquisition speculation.

Merrill walked old streets in new clothes, feet and legs aching from the damp stone. She held a book in her hand and string in her pocket, and no one stopped her. She was just another elf, her face forgotten by the city even as her muscles re-learned the ache of walking there. Isabela would be displeased, she thought. But the anonymity made Merrill smile. All of Kirkwall’s crooked corners and bits of statuary were still so very charming, and now she would not get lost.   
  
She could even give directions.   
  
If the streets had forgotten her, they had not forgotten Varric Tethras. Merrill had seen his books on stall tables and his name carved into his old seat at the Hanged Man. When she said his name, she was met with wide eyes and wistful laughter, and a few nervous shifts some of the less reputable sorts imagined the old, metallic click of Bianca’s early notes. But Varric, so the city whispered, was not here.   
  
He was snatched up by another story. An army, Seekers and demons and new strangeness that Merrill had felt across the Free Marches and well into Ferelden. She’d felt the veil tear in a dozen places between Denerim and Llomerryn, all along her own slow, solitary travel. And she had heard of a dwarf who liked to tell stories, who moved in its wake. So she had written a letter, to go with one of the old Guard romances and the faded ball of string. And Kirkwall had felt like the best place to set it loose.   
  


> _Dear Varric._  
>   
>  Not much to say, lethallin, but a lot of love to give with it. I’ve heard you’re up to brave and dangerous things. We all are, I imagine, but yours will have the best stories. Find me and tell them, one day. I spend a lot of time in Denerim, now. There’s an elf, there—Shianni. She’s wonderful—so very fierce! I’m learning more about the world all the time. I saw Siege Harder on sale in Llomerryn, of all places, when I was travelling with Isabela, and it made me miss you very much. So, when I heard that you had left Kirkwall and gone to travel an even longer road than mine, I thought to send it off into the world to see if it finds you.   
>   
> Of course, this might be very silly, but I’ve never minded that. I hope the string comes in useful, and that it makes you smile.  
>   
> Keep safe, old friend. Tell me the story, when you can.   
> M  
>   
> 

A breeze plucked at the gold and blue scarf tied in her hair, and she caught it with a practised hand. It was windy by the docks. She scanned the boats, trying to remember all her old friend had ever said was best in a ship. And when she left her package in a likely sailor’s hands, she made sure to press a kiss the paper first. 


	3. kiss battle: Losing hand after hand of Wicked Grace (Bethany/Varric, act 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varric visits the Gallows.

The dwarf met the mage’s eyes over two serpents and song, and smiled.

“Sunshine,” he said. “Never play for money.”

Bethany laughed, setting down a motley assortment of knights and daggers. “I’d have to find some, first.”

“You should work harder at winning it off me.”

“The currency is different, here,” she said, waving to a small apprentice who stared at them through one of the narrow windows that faced their spot in the Gallows Courtyard. She shook her head as the child ran, and Varric caught the shadow in her smile.

“It’s all kisses and secrets and space,” she said. “You deal.”

Varric Tethras took up the deck, nodding to the Templars who made sure that none of their shadows touched his own, just so long as the gold kept flowing. Bethany saw, and she squeezed his hand as he passed her the cards, with a good three pairs snuck inside.

She laughed when she won the round.

“ _Cheat.”_

“That’s the idea, Sunshine.”

“That you let me win? Hardly.”

Varric shook his head. “You don’t even take advantage of it.”

Bethany leaned forward, eyes sparkling, and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Varric.”

Friendship comes in many forms. Sometimes, it means sweetalking your way into a prison, and losing hand after hand of Wicked Grace.


	4. kiss battle/femslash february: Lessons (Bethany/Isabela).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bethany muses. Isabela is appreciative.

“I have to ask,” Bethany said, easing a cramp in her back and laughing when her lover pressed a hand to the spot, calloused palm catching at her skin. “Why _six_ things?” 

Isabela snorted. “I thought I’d made that clear.”   
  
“Oh, yes.” The mage smiled, leaning into Isabela as the other woman settled against her back, long, dark legs bracketing her own. She let her hand trail across Isabela’s thigh. “I know what you meant, but there’s so much  _more_.”

Lifting the pirate’s hand to her mouth, Bethany kissed the back of it. Flicked her out between the the first two fingers, and blushed at the simple, joyous wickedness of it, all mixed in with her friend’s surprised laugher.   
  
“There’s  _all_  of you, after all.” she said, soft and slightly wondering. Still blushing, she sucked a fingertip into her mouth, and bit.   
  
Isabela shuddered. “Sweetness,” she managed, brushing Bethany’s hair off her neck with her free hand, and pressing a kiss to her shoulder. “I think I _like_ it when you’re philosophical.”


	5. for faejilly: A private word, pg (Aveline/Donnic)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guardsman Donnic does not file a complaint.

“Guardsman Donnic, I—I can explain.”

Aveline’s office had a thick door and good locks. Aveline still stood braced against it as if she was the last line of defense against laughter and eavesdroppers and well-meaning friends. Her hands were white knucked at her side, and her voice shook. Anger? Embarrassment? Donnic wasn’t sure. He just knew that Aveline Vallen was looking at him, eyes bright with tears and her chin held high, when a part of her clearly wanted to bolt.

 _Bravery comes in many forms_. She’d said that, once. Soft and firm to a raw recruit, ashamed of running for help. She had smiled when she saw Donnic—quick and quiet, responding to his salute with one of her own. He had seen her like that many times. Grave and stern, quietly sad. He had seen her proud: exalted, with Hawke’s mabari running at her heels. He had seen her brightly pressed in parade dress, seen her swearing like a sailor, covered in blood. He had her laughing at her own small awkwardness, until he forgot it had ever been between them.

Donnic had never seen her like this.

“I understand,” she said. “If you want to file a complaint.”

“Captain, I—”

“—the entire affair was unprofessional. It was—”

“— _Aveline._ ” He hadn’t said her name aloud in years. Not since she had dragged him from am ambush, looking for all the world like flame given form. Not since she had made Captain of the Guard. It came easier than he expected. Her eyes widened, and he had to swallow.

“It’s a good morning for an afternoon,” he said, watching carefully as surprise started to shift into disbelief. “Don’t you think?”

Aveline’s hands fisted. “I deserve that,” she muttered. “Maker, help me, I’m—”

“I’m not going to file a complaint, Captain.” Donnic smiled. He couldn’t help it. The past few days had been strange and overlong, he had sand from the Wounded Coast stuck in one boot, and Aveline was the bravest person he had ever met. “Except possibly about the basin idea. Isabela had it all wrong. They’re never the right height. Logistics, you know.”

Aveline spluttered, and Donnic took the moment to step closer to the door, his palm resting against the wood by her shoulder, his eyes meeting hers. Breath for breath.

“Donnic.”

“Yes, Guard Captain?”

He kissed her. Some orders did not need words.         


	6. for startledgazette: Capsized under fair winds (Merrill/Hawke/Isabela, 232 words)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "'Come away with me,' you said. 'We'll sail', you said." 
> 
> Hawke and Merrill make very interesting pirates.

Isabela broke the surface with a laugh and a curse, Merrill’s hand tight in hers while Hawke glared at them from the the other side of their lifeboat.

“Still with me, kitten?”

Merrill coughed, braids flying as she shook her head to clear it.  “ _Elgar’nan,”_ she gasped. “I can swim, you know. You taught me.”

Isabela grinned, slinging her free arm across the upturned hull. It barely moved.

“That doesn’t prove much, right now,” Hawke drawled. Salt was already drying across her cheeks, in the Rivaini gold that still hung from her ears and sparkled from her nose. “Isabela, you overturned a _skiff_.”

“Look at you and all your fancy nautical names. I’ve created a monster.”

“’Come away with me’, you said. “’We’ll sail,’ you said. ‘The three of us, sailors and sirens—”

“—and treasure hunters,” Merrill added, twisting and letting the water lift her until she floated on her back. The silver beads strung through her hair glinted like the inside of shells. “Don’t forget that.”

Isabela dived, deep and swift and sure, and Hawke shrieked as strong, familiar gripped her by the ankle. Merrill watched the two of them, the light playing off skin and teeth and tangled hair, the air full of spluttering oaths and salt, with bubbles breaking all about them, and thought there were many worse things than falling out of a boat in a calm sea.

 

 


	7. from antivanrogue: Captain and Queen (Anora/Isabela)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The (amazing) [tumblr plot bunny]() from antivanrogue says it all:
> 
> _omg i just_
> 
> _AU where anora is exiled instead of alistair, and runs away with isabela to be a pirate_
> 
> These are just drabbles, but a larger fic may eventuate once I'm done with RiC.

Eamon stands before her, and she would spit at him if she could.

It is Loghain’s blood that stops her. It thickens on the stones at her feet. Somehow, the idea of her own spit mingling with the air and the dust and the words that would follow is impossible to bear. They would call her hysterical. And her father would still be dead.

“Guards. Take her away.”

Expected orders, too easily given. Redcliffe men, reaching for her upper arms, while Eamon’s prize sheep shifts uncomfortably in Cailan’s armor and the painted figures of her childhood rustle and lean in, trying to see.

Anora meets Alistair’s eyes. They are scared. Determined. They are the wrong color, and skate away from her own.

He was stupid, not to kill her. Somehow, this final weakness makes it easier to leave.

* * *

Isabela surveys the Maferath’s Rebuke. Fresh out of Denerim and full of nervous, wealthy sorts fleeing the Blight, the poor old thing is leaning heavily in the water.

Her crew are delighted, strutting and basking in the easy work, pocketing gold and favours and dreaming of spoils during shore leave. Even the Captain was easier than an Antivan dockworker, passing over charts and glass with resignation and mumbled entreaties to please,  _please_  leave all the killing to Darkspawn or taxmen. It’s all so _s_ _imple_  that it’s almost boring. She is tempted to move back to the Call and leave clean-up to Brand and Casavir.  

And then she hears the sound.

A small, sweet  _shiiik_  of sound. A dagger, drawn from a sheath. Isabela turns, catching the would be assasin’s wrist and pressing until the blade falls at their feet. She meets cool blue eyes with her own, and finds that she is holding a blur of pale colurs, all fine bones and gold hair, pulled cleanly back. The woman’s cheeks flush red, and there are bruises forming under Isabela’s fingers. She lifts her chin.

“Thought to try something, sweet thing?”

The woman laughs. Sharp and hard and rather lovely, just like the rest of her. “I’m embarrassed no one else has,” she says.

“They know better.” Isabela smiles. “But if we’re going to be  _traditional_ _,_  then I might as well do this properly.”

Isabela moves her free hand, finding the purse on the woman’s belt. “So,” she says. “What will it be? Your money, or your life?”

The woman smiles. “You know,” she says. “I’d much rather have yours.”

* * *

“You can change it, you know,” Isabela says, as Anora, straight-backed in the Crow’s Nest, gets her first true glimpse of the Eastern Sea. The words are plucked from her, the wind eager and loud and reaching into her mouth, through her clothes.

“Change what?” Anora’s hair is stuck down with rain, her sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and a map of scars and callouses has started to creep from her palms to her forearms. She is stippled red with a week’s sunburn, and her eyes match the sky.

“Your name.” The rigging stings her hands, and Anora looks down at her, both eyebrows raised. “I did.”

“Why would I do that?”

Isabela shrugs. “I had a husband too, once. A King in his own home.”

If Anora feels any surprise at this revelation, which now tastes strange in Isabela’s mouth, she does not show it. It is her turn to shrug. The gesture looks wrong on her.

“I am Anora Mac Tir,” she says. “It fits the pirate as much as the Queen.”

“One day,” Isabela says, “You are going to get your own ship. And  _that_  thought’s enough to scare me shitless.”

“ _Good_.”

Looking up into Anora’s grinning face, Isabela feels the world tilt, just a little.

* * *

Anora grits her teeth as the heated needle passes through her flesh, the smell of her own blood mixing with the sea and her own sweat, and the bergamot oil Isabela likes to use on her hands. These hands work busily, now, threading and cleaning and clapping with delight as Anora steps back, feeling the new weight of gold at her ear and the tug of skin at her eyebrow. Anora lets her fingers brush the tiny gold bar there, and almost enjoys the sting.

“It suits?”

“Better than the crown jewels.” Isabela chuckles. “Oh, the  _look_ on your face. One day it will all start being funny. I promise.” She pauses, head tilting to the side, the gold threads bright in her headscarf. “And we could always steal them, I suppose.”

“You could—what?”

“The Theirin jewels.” Isabela shook her head, sighing. “Not that they’re anything much.” Anora, long used to the quicksilver changes in Isabela’s conversation, still finds herself leaning forward, trying to keep up. “You Fereldans. So proud of a country where it always rains and nothing sparkles. But I’m  _bored_ , and we could do it. I’m sure we could.”

Anora shakes her head, wincing at the motion. “You are seriously suggesting—wait, no, don’t answer that.” She sighs. “Thank you,” she says. “For the help. And for—” she swallows. “For many things I never expected, Captain.”

“Oh, hush, no one ever expects me,” Isabela says.

Back in her cabin, Anora examines her refection the small, clear mirror she took from an Antivan trireme. Gold gleams at her ears and her left eyebrow, darker than her hair and taking up the the light from her tiny port window. There is a scar in that eyebrow, too. Another on her chin—the last still slightly swollen, and purple at its edges. She smiles, and it tugs at each scar, and the new jewelry in her skin. She glitters. No one in Ferelden would know her, now.

_If you think I will make that vow, then you do not know me at all._

Anora Mac Tir, pirate of the Eastern seas, is a woman with no promises to keep. 


	8. Heavy in her hand (Aveline/Donnic, Aveline/Wesley, ladyHawke/Anders - character death)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aveline worries at parallels, once Kirkwall is finished burning. End of game spoilers.

After the first weeks, people stopped saying Anders’s name. He was the mage.  _All_ mages, if the speaker was angry or triumphant. The renegade. The healer. The dead man, not worthy of a hole in the ground.

His name, when it was said at all, was a whisper or a curse, hardly connected to a man who lost Varric’s money at cards and cried over dead cats and snuck his manifesto into Isabela’s novels.

Aveline, listening to the city as it shifted and rebuilt, swallowed shock whenever she heard it, trying to fit the new power of the man’s name back into the tired, lanky body Hawke had loved, and killed in the Gallows Courtyard.

Her mouth still tasted of smoke.

There had been time, after the thrice-cursed mess of it all and once the Champion escaped across the sea. Time to bathe, and to sleep. Time to clean her sword; time even to put it  _down_ , which was stranger than anything else. She and Donnic had held each other’s hands, and Aveline could have sworn that she felt the change as blood returned to his fingers, and dents from the hilt smoothed out along his palm. And when he smiled at her, her Guardsman, she had given up her tired, clumsy whimsy for better things. They were safe. Safe and well, and whole.

But Kirkwall was still too quiet around its dead, and Aveline’s throat was still scorched.

“Love?”

Donnic. His hands gentle as he untangled hers from the sheets. He let her sit.

“The usual.”

“Ah.”

The shorthand of married life extended all the way out to nightmares. Aveline chuckled, dashing tears from her eyes. “If I could talk to Hawke again,” she said, “I’d thump her for leaving us all in this mess.”

Donnic smiled. “There’s likely a queue. But if they make you Viscount—”

“—don’t even say it, Guardsman.”

Aveline shook her head. “If I saw her again I’d tell her I was sorry.” She swallowed, grateful when her husband said nothing, only shifted to fit an arm about her shoulders. “She made a choice,” she said. “With Anders. An ugly choice. A  _right_  choice. And I still wish she hadn’t had to kill him. There. In that moment. With her own hands.” 

Wesley. The Blight bruising his face. His body fevered and sweat-slick under her hands, where leather had torn. His hand tight around hers while she held the dagger, the wait and weight and  _pressure_ , and the final, tugging loss of him. Hawke had watched, then, and Aveline had almost hated her for it.

“It…there’s a weight to it,” she said. Donnic kissed her shoulder. “And I’m sorry.”

“Wherever she is,” Donnic said, the words low and warm in the dark, “She probably knows.”

 


	9. for faejilly: unspoken debts (Merrill/Isabela - make me choose meme)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, friends don't need to speak.

“Don’t worry, kitten. It won’t be for long.”

Merrill stares a little. It’s rude. Of  _course_ it’s rude, in a city where everyone seems to be hiding something, and people always act strangely when she looks at them too hard, as if they’ve just realised they might have a spot on their chin, or think they’re going to start bleeding everywhere. But Isabela looked  _tired_. Weary and windblown, and Merrill had missed her, after the Arishok. She’d been terribly brave, and now she was standing in Merrill’s doorway, a place where whole generations of spiders made use of the left corner, and she didn’t have a seat.

“ _Elgar’nan._ Why is my house always such a mess? It’s—”

“—it’s clean, sometimes. I’ll swear.” Isabela grins. It is almost right. “It’s all right. I’ll go back to the Hanged Man. Just…not right now. Please?”

Merrill hugs her before any other words spill out, laughing and feeling the mix of skin and fine corsetry and a shirt as sturdy as sailcloth, and press of the other woman’s jewelry against her cheek, blood warm and one of her first happy memories of this house. She feels Isabela’s hand in her hair, and soon they’re both laughing, with Merrill pushing her down gently onto the bed for want of a chair.

“You can stay as long as you need,” Merrill says, letting out a squeak of surprise when Isabela presses a kiss to the back of her hand, as if she were a fine lady in a tale.

***

“Don’t worry,  _lethallan_. It won’t—”

“—oh, Merrill—”

“—it won’t be for long.”

Isabela looks at her friend.  _Really_ looks at her, or tries to. It’s easy just to see the edges of Merrill. Easier to look at smiling Merrill. Shy Merrill. Twine and stories and by-the-Dread- _Wolf_ -housekeeping-is-hard-Merrill, than the woman made up from all of that. But now, all of Merrill’s bright edges are covered up with blood, and there is glass in her hair, in the folds of her clothing. She stands in the doorway of Isabela’s little room, and smells of sulfur and sadness.

Feelings are hard, but  _this_  is simple. Isabela reaches forward, and plucks the largest shard from Merrill’s hair. It’s thick glass. Her palms, long practiced and heavily calloused, are safe. Under guttering lamplight, it carries and faint, oily sheen. She sets it down.

“You broke the mirror, kitten.”

“I  _had_ to,” she says, steady and small. “I had—”

“— _you_  have a place to bunk tonight,” Isabela says, firm. “And full use of my wretched tin bath. Best the Hanged Man has to offer.”

Merrill takes both of Isabela’s hands in hers, and something twists, deep inside, when her friend kisses both her palms.


	10. for ironbearicade: Unwanted empathy (Anders/Fenris, if you squint)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris does not approve of doing Emile de Launcet any favours. Anders reflects on abominations. Written for the make me choose meme on tumblr: Awakening!Anders, or Justice!Anders.

Watching Hawke deal with the de Launcet welp is discomforting. The mage looks around at the world like he might eat it. If it’s an act it’s a good one, and if it  _isn’t_  an act, then Fenris is truly watching a man who has grown old enough to lose his hair, but barely knows how to walk through doors.

He drinks the Hanged Man’s swill like nectar. Now, Hawke waits for him out of an obscene act of pity, which means that Fenris will also wait, as the bar empties out around them. Another foolish errand.

“Scowl any more and you might lose an eyebrow.” Anders does not look up from the empty glass he has cradled between his hands, but Fenris flinches, hearing a smile. “Just one, mind.”

“Desist, mage.”

Anders looks up. “See, you  _were_ scowling.” The smile Fenris heard in his voice is there for all to see, though fainter and wearier than he expected. “That poor bastard esd never going to notice, you know.”

“I was not—” Fenris sighs. “He wasted his freedom.”

Anders chuckles, turning over the empty glass. “Sometimes, you and Justice sound like echoes. Though at least you’d probably let me drink.”

Fenris is unsure which image is more disturbing: being a demon, or possessing Anders. He shudders. “I’d—”

“—you’d be the  _crankiest_ spirit that ever there was.” There is something light in the healer’s tone, now. A false brightness, underscored by a flash of teeth. The brief press of fingertips to an earlobe, as if something hung there. “Maker, that’s a horror and half.”

“Your imagination is…disturbing.”

“It’s had a lot of practise.” Anders shrugs. “I used to be that man, you know.”

Fenris smirks. “Orlesian, balding, and terrible at flirting?”

“I was  _incredible_ at flirting, thanks.” Anders does not sound put out. It is disappointing. Instead, he continues to stare at the empty beer glass. “And I’d sit in places like this, big-eyed and in love with the world, after every escape. And I escaped a  _lot_. It was easy to find me. Sometimes I miss the…ease of it.”

“The ease of idiocy?” Fenris shifts in his seat, wondering if the fat blue sparks that play across the mage’s fingers are a trick of the light, or the result of three glasses of bad wine on a dull evening.

“The ease of that  _self_ ,” Anders says, setting the glass down and clenching his hands. The sparks die. He taps the side of his head with a finger. “I’d never go back to being him, you know. Or a Warden.”

Fenris gives up. Elliptical conversations with wistful abominations are too much on top of Hawke’s errands. “Why are you  _telling_ me this?”

“Because you feel sorry for him,” Anders says. “Just a little bit. And so do I.”

The mage grins, again. Not the fey ghost he had given before, with all the hints of an older, different self, but his usual smile. Rueful, and a little snide, and infuriating. “Which means that I am feeling terribly sorry for  _myself_ , as well. May it bring you joy.”

“For someone who never drinks,” Fenris mutters, “You become maudlin with little effort.”

Anders laughs, and the two of them keep their uneasy vigil for Emille de Launcet by the bar.


	11. for sibylla-surana: A ship, and time to search with her (Varania, Fenris/Isabela)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris and Isabela take a tour of the Imperium. Written for the make me choose meme -- Leto or Fenris.

He won’t find her. Foolishness, even to try.

Qarinus is a city of weavers and tanneries, the air thick with fibres and dust, and bright, stinking dyes mixing with the mud of the street. Isabela says you can tell a man’s district from the colour of his ankles. Fenris, wincing as he steps around a pool of virulent blue run-off, supposes that dye is better than blood.

“Just as hard to get out, though, which seems  _criminally_  unfair.”

Isabela has grown, out of Kirkwall. She has gained muscle in her arms and her back, the fine lines around her eyes deepening as they approach the Imperium. Her voice takes Tevene and laughs over it, roughens its careful endings and bell-tones with a cheerful disregard for traditional word order. She wears more gold at her wrists, and a dagger there, besides, with strapping that, he suspects, Merrill might have made. She grins at him, dipping one hand into a marketplace barrel and weighing grain like gold.

“You don’t have to come,” he says.

“Oh, I’m not.”

A pause. “You are  _here_.”

“Shopping!” More laughter. A light, glancing kiss in the space above his cheekbone, below the eye. “You’re on a quest in a city full of silk, and I  _need_ a new shirt, sweet thing.”

“Not new sheets?”

She grins, offering an outrageously low price to the vendor. “I knew ship life would be good for you,” she says easily, once the spluttering stops.

“You,” Fenris mutters, “Are smug.”

“Disgracefully,” she agrees, an eyebrow raised. “And you are stalling.  _You_  came here, sweet.”

He did. He was the one who poured over Isabela’s maps, testing out new skills with stars and compass to plot the route to this particular Tevinter city. Qarinus. A place where the world’s best tailors were trained, and where a magister named Ahriman had taken one into his service, before she showed magic of her own.

“She will not see me,” he manages. “I should not see her. I—”

“—you  _didn’t_ kill her,” Isabela’s voice is tinted with exasperation, and the grain merchant leans forward, hearing it and hoping for a slip. “And she didn’t kill you. Though she did try.”

“So did I.”

“So…yell about it, then! I think siblings do that. I don’t know.” She catches the merchant’s counter offer and spits it back without a blink, before turning to Fenris. She does not touch, and he is grateful for it.

“I don’t know why you need to do this, Fenris,” she says. “It’s bloody daft, if you ask me. But you didn’t, and that’s good.” She shrugs, all seriousness shattered by an easy, open smile that still takes him by surprise, if he isn’t ready for it. “You can stop me any time. This speech is awful.”

“It is…illuminating,” he says.

Isabela rolls her eyes. “Go on,” she says, and her voice catches a little, so Fenris can almost feel the words, even from feet away. “By all accounts, a boy called Leto did some brave and stupid things. Varania might as well learn that  _that_ hasn’t changed.”

Turning away from his friend, Fenris lets himself be drawn into the rush and colour of the market. He is looking for a magister who was once a tailor and once a slave; with hair the colour of carnelians, who may or may not be dead.

He won’t find her. Foolishness, even to try.

But his heart is lighter for it. 


	12. for faejilly: promises to keep (Aveline/Donnic - make me choose meme)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aveline Vallen and Donnic Hendyr are moving up in the world.
> 
> Written for the make me choose meme - Donnic or Wesley. Poor Wesley didn't stand a chance.

All the planning in the world can’t help the mess. Aveline, elbow deep in a decade of her own belongings (and  _when_ she actually came to own 27 broken shin guards, inventory reports for the City Guard dated three years before the Blight, and Antivan fan with a calligraphic map on one side and unlikely physical positions on the other did not bear thinking about) shook her head as she heard her husband swearing in the next room.

She and Donnic now seemed to have an alarming number of the things. Waiting. Empty. Looming. She listened to the sound of them, the echo and space and the scrape of crates on the new floor.

“None of this is going to fix itself,” she muttered. “Sentimental fool.”

New footsteps. Familiar tread. “Don’t say that too loud, love.” Donnic knelt by her side, peering into the half empty crate. “You’re a woman of consequence.”

Aveline snorted, reaching in. “Oh, I’ll give you consequence—” she paused, hand closing around something hard, and cool, and wrought into familiar patterns beneath her fingertips. “Maker, is this—?”

She lifted the object, and her husband smiled.

“You  _kept_ this?”

“Ah,” said Donnic. “You’ve found me out.”

The copper marigolds had been solid work, a decade ago. They kept up well, barely a hint of verdigris over the great, flaming, mortifying-maker-blasted  _shine_  of them. Aveline groaned as Donnic reached around her, pulling them from her grasp. From the corner of her eye, she saw him study the things, smiling and absorbed.

“Copper is strong, flowers are soft,” he said. “Still true.”

“This is—” his hand was in her hair, closing in a brief, sweet-sharp hold before gently cupping her skull, fingers pressing at the snarl of tight muscle at the back of her neck.

“—all true,” he said, as she groaned. “Though I don’t think I would have been able to preserve a sheaf of wheat.”

Aveline chuckled. There was nothing else for it, really. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Anything you want, Viscount Vallen,” Donnic grinned, and she shifted to kiss him.

In the laughing aftermath, Aveline grinning and Donnic flushed and only half a skewed wit between them, the pair sat with their backs against storage chests and kept their hands entwined.

“We are  _both_ ,” said Donnic, casting a look to the discarded metal plate a few yards away, “Sentimental fools.”  


End file.
